Abstract:

The academic results, the motivation and the development of personal and social skills in the students have been investigated after the application of the Service Learning (SL) Project. In this sense, two quantitative hypotheses and a qualitative research question have been formulated.
In SL, knowledge is used to improve something in the community and service becomes a learning experience that provides knowledge and values. Learning and service are linked by a circular relationship in which both parties benefit: learning acquires civic sense and service becomes a workshop on values and knowledge.
Coherently with the principles of SL, this research analyzes the effects of its use in three dimensions. After focusing the researcher approach in the theoretical framework and describing the pedagogical intervention program, first, we analyze the academic results that are obtained in the methodological application. Second, the focus is on the study of an absolutely decisive variable in learning: motivation. Through a quasi-experimental research approach with pretest-posttest measures the effect of the SL program on it is studied. Thirdly, closely related to the fundamentals of SL, it is investigated in its suitability to develop personal and social skills in the students, betting on a concept of education broader than the simple transmission of academic content. For this, the variables will be analyzed in a complementary way from two research areas, the quantitative data will provide us with answers regarding the academic performance of the students and the level of motivation acquired with the provision of the service and the qualitative analysis will be necessary to obtain a broad vision of a complex phenomenon as it is a process of teaching-learning.

Keywords:

Innovation, Motivation, Service Learning, Secondary Education.